Trouble on His Wings (7 page)

Chapter
Seven

M
R. SEN SHU WU
had the kind of a
smile that is painted on dolls—with the exception that nothing could ever
remove it, not even breakage. He answered all questions with the very best of
polite language, bowed in payment for every attention and generally gave the
impression that he had but one mission in life—to utterly efface himself. At
this time in particular he was anxious to be as unnoticed as possible and, when
he thought no one was looking, his small brown eyes would try to reach around
corners as though expecting, from moment to moment, the arrival of at least a
tiger.

Johnny, after seven
years of photographing mankind in action, was not likely to miss any such
signs, and before they had shoved off from San Francisco, he had already
remarked to Irish in private, “I hope you can swim.”

“Huh?” Irish had said.

“Yeah, swim. But what
I'm worrying about is not whether we'll be lost along the wayside, as that's
pretty well established, but whether Mr. Sen Shu Wu will have company on the
highway back to his ancestors.”

“Gee, y'think there'll
be trouble?”

When the big Clipper
wallowed down the bay to swoosh into the sky and head westward, the Jinx asked
the same question. “What's the matter with our friend, Johnny? He looks like he
expected the sky to fall in. Is there going to be trouble?”

Johnny looked at her
grimly and she knew what he meant.

“I suppose there will
be,” she decided, with a sigh. “But you don't really think I'm a jinx, do you?”

Johnny leaned back on
his head, dragging on a cigarette and scanning the vanishing coastline below.

“You don't, do you,
Johnny?” she persisted. “Honest, things just happen, that's all. You . . .
you'd have turned me over to the police if you really thought I was.”

“I don't know why I
didn't,” said Johnny. “Why don't you come clean with a guy? What did you do?”

She was instantly
frightened, glancing around to see if any of the other passengers had overheard.

“All right,” said
Johnny. “Keep it to yourself.” He looked at her speculatively, still asking
himself over and over just why he considered it his bounden duty to play escort
to her. She was lovely—especially so in those gracefully tailored whites she had
mysteriously produced in San Francisco—and there was something . . . No! He was
too damned tough to get caught falling in love with any girl. He'd been too far
and seen too many. And besides, wasn't she a jinx?

Mr. Sen Shu Wu, across
from Johnny, smiled faintly and looked a little green. He was getting airsick,
despite the calmness of the day, but he didn't allow himself to be discomposed.
“Nice sea, isn't it, Mr. Brice?”

“Yeah,” said Johnny,
“there's lots of it.”

“Very strange, seeing
the coast depart behind us. Makes one feel oddly without purpose, sailing off
into the horizon. It is so very far to my country.”

“It's plenty far to
swim,” said Johnny.

Mr. Sen Shu Wu's eyes
flickered over Johnny's camera which, at Johnny's request, had been left in the
cabin. He said nothing, but he knew very well that this newsreel man was not
there by accident. Beneath his own feet was a small briefcase—but size had
nothing to do with importance, as treaties take but small space, and a
fifty-million-dollar bill of exchange can be wadded into a vest pocket. The
enemy would do anything to get Mr. Sen Shu Wu personally, let alone to stop
those treaties and that bill.

 Mr. Wu and Johnny
smiled at each other, understanding with mutual respect.

“News consists mainly
of disaster,” commented Mr. Sen Shu Wu.

“News is trouble,”
said Johnny. “And quantity makes quality.”

“I hope, for your
sake,” said the Oriental politely, “that you are not disappointed. As for me .
. .”

Johnny saw the doom in
his eyes and tried to cheer him up. “Never mind. I've got a bad-luck charm here
that makes it completely impossible for me to get any good news shots. You're
as safe as if you were home in bed.”

“That might not be so
safe,” smiled Mr. Sen Shu Wu. “Are you referring to your charming companion?”

“Twenty-one-carat
jinx,” said Johnny. “This trip will be as uneventful as taking the
Albany night
boat
.”

Mr. Sen Shu Wu's smile
was a trifle uncertain for a moment. “You newsreel men astound me, Mr. Brice.
Have you no regard for your own safety? An attack upon me would inevitably
place you in extreme danger.”

“He eats it,” said the
Jinx, “with or without cream. His idea of heaven would be the assassination of
the president with
siege guns
during a five-alarm fire in an earthquake.
Newsreel men have cameras for hearts, Mr. Wu.”

“Aw, they do not,”
stated Irish, turning around. “I saw Johnny drop his camera in a flood once to
pull three kids out of the drink, and he damn near drowned doing it, too.”

“He probably already
had his pictures,” said the Jinx.

“Sure,” said Johnny,
before he thought.

They laughed at him,
and the big Clipper bore upward into the smoother air and the Pacific stretched
limitlessly below. Hawaii was far ahead, and beyond that . . .

Chapter
Eight

B
UT
nothing happened in Hawaii
and the endless blue leagues of the Pacific fled by below, flanked by the
strange,
castellated clouds
of the tropics, which flamed each night before the
sea vanished below and flamed each dawn before the sea could again be seen.
Always the clouds, never overhead, rarely below, always on the horizon. Forever
the sea, that seven million square miles of the Pacific, a wide, variegated
world of its own, too great and lordly to notice the bright wings of the
airliner.

And then Manila, a
week out of San Francisco, a week in the company of men one would never see
again, but who had become friends just the same. The Jinx, moving in a world
she had never before seen, riding the crest of great events, had seen deeper
into Johnny than he knew.

In the sticky-hot
Customs, she clung close to Irish and Johnny, recoiling at the sight of the
armed, brown police, anxious to be free once more of these patrolled towns.
Even more than the officers, she was interested in the changing crowd,
especially when it contained well-dressed people.

And then they were
aloft again, heading for China. But it was no longer a Clipper, but a small,
eight-passenger cabin plane of the Chinese National Airways.

It was now that Mr.
Wu's calm began to break. Any sudden remark would make him start violently, and
forever his eyes patrolled the skies ahead and above. Out from under them
rolled the South China Sea and, finally with morning, China spread before them.
Their destination was Chau-chow on the
Han River
, a prudent choice of Mr. Wu,
who hoped against hope that the—

Japanese battle planes
glittered briefly as they wheeled in the sky. The pilot, a young American, gave
a startled glance into the cabin and then peered upward again. Mr. Wu, face
pressed against the window, shivered like a deer which has heard hounds. There
were eight of those planes, vicious and stubby and efficient. They were here
with a job to do, and with Oriental calm they set about it, getting neatly into
a stair-step formation out of which they would start their dives. A sharp,
brief barking sound was in the air—those pilots were warming up their machine
guns for the coldblooded kill.

The Jinx's face was
pale, eyes fixed in fascination upon the death which waited in the sky. It
seemed impossible that such cool deliberation could forerun what it would. The
pilot of the passenger plane was diving, engines wide open. Below was the Han
River, its bulk broadening, as they neared it, into a coffee-colored sheet.
Suddenly the Jinx was aware of Johnny's activities. With steady hands he was
checking the load of his camera. Irish was reading a light meter and counting
it off. Johnny lifted the camera to the heavens and the small whir of it was
audible, even above the scream of the transport's engines and the growing yowl
above.

A rattling, snapping
sound burst about them. A great hole appeared in the back of the Chinese
secretary's neck. He quietly folded up on the back of Mr. Wu's seat. Daylight
could be seen in the top of the cabin; small holes were there, like stars. The
rattling sound came again. But the Jinx heard Johnny's camera whirring once
more. He was shooting the river as it swept up to them.

Past the windows
flashed, in rapid order, four of the Japanese planes, wheeling below to zoom
once more into the sky while the remaining ships came down.

The transport's engine
clanked and was still, and the dismal howl of wind past
struts
and through
bullet-holed wings was suddenly more than the Jinx's ears could stand. The
drumming engines of the battle planes seemed far off and unreal.

The transport leveled
out for a crash landing in the water. The camera's whir stopped for a moment,
while Johnny buckled his belt. And then he pointed the nose of his camera up
once more and caught three warplanes streaking down, one after the other,
emptying their drums and flashing by. Swiftly he turned his lens on the water
which, in the next instant, shot over them in a great, translucent sheet. The
transport bobbed up, plowing ahead. All about them the water was lined with
rows of small geysers. Machine-gun bullets. The
cha-cha-cha-cha
of the
guns was louder now. The transport was slowing down. With a start, the Jinx saw
the black bulk of a
man-o'-war
looming just ahead.

The pilot leaped up.
“Swim for it!” he shouted, as he slammed open his door. He was gone. Mr. Wu
struggled up, death stamped like a white mask on his face. He went through the
port into the water below.

The transport leveled out for a crash landing in the water.

“Beat it!” ordered
Johnny. “Grab her, Irish.”

Irish grabbed her and
thrust her out, breaking her instinctive hold on the plane. The water was cold
as she fought through its depths, and then Irish had her again. They swam
swiftly away from the ship.

Suddenly she knew
Johnny wasn't with them. The water was boiling around the plane as bullets
hailed out of the sky. In a sick surge of terror she screamed, “Johnny's back
there!”

Irish turned in the
river and stared at the transport. And then they saw Johnny. He had just
finished his last shot of the man-o'-war and was turning his camera on the
struggling Mr. Wu, now far out from the ship.

“Johnny!” she cried.

In the din of guns her
voice was lost. In an agony of suspense, she watched him coolly take out the
drum and wrap it in a rubber sheet, thrusting it into a container. But even
then he did not jump. With the plane rocked by striking lead, Johnny was calmly
loading his camera again. Finally he focused it on the man-o'-war, the sky, and
then the water, and then he dropped it and, in a long dive, hit the water.

The pilot had
vanished. Mr. Wu was struggling feebly and then she knew that Johnny wasn't
coming to them, he was heading for Mr. Wu. With unceremonious hand he gripped
the ambassador's collar and towed him toward the shore.

The shelling had
stopped, and the resulting quiet was hard on the eardrums. The shore seemed a
thousand miles away, and she began to despair of their ever reaching it.

Suddenly, directly in
front of them, a ship's boat loomed. Brown hands fastened themselves upon the
swimmers and lifted them into the boat.

The Jinx pushed her
hair from her eyes and looked around at the Japanese sailors on the thwarts.
Johnny, she saw with a start, was empty-handed. No, Irish did not have the
drum. With her spirits sinking even lower, she felt the conviction that she was
again the cause of lost film.

Mr. Wu was nodding
politely to a Japanese officer, who bowed politely in return, and then the
gig
swerved into a long turn and sped back to the man-o'-war.

They clambered up the
black side, trailing water on the white-scoured ladder, and arrived in a group
of polite officers on the deck. The captain, seeing them, turned and made a
sign with his hand to the gig, which curved outward again and swept down upon
the wrecked but floating transport. She saw the officer retrieve Johnny's
camera from it, while others tossed luggage into the gig and then the boat came
back.

“I am very sorry,”
said the bedraggled Mr. Wu to the Jinx, “to be the cause of unpleasantness to
you.”

She didn't think he
meant more than the transport crash itself, until she heard Johnny talking to
the captain.

“Ah, yes,” said the
captain to Johnny. “I am very sorry. I realize how serious it is. But, believe
me, we made a most regrettable mistake, thinking you were a Chinese bombing
plane sent to destroy this warship. Very regrettable, very sorry.”

“A common mistake,
Captain,” said Johnny, tight-jawed, but not to be outdone in politeness. “If
you would be so kind as to set us ashore—”

“The country,” said
the captain, “is very wild. I would fear for your safety. May I invite you to
be my guests?” He was eyeing the camera, which was being brought aboard. “We
will store this for you—if you do not mind?”

“Oh, not at all,” said
Johnny, grimly.

“You will be taken to
your cabins,” smiled the captain.

Escorted by a young
officer, Mr. Wu went slowly down a hatch and out of sight. Another officer
signed that the Americans were to follow him. Johnny took Irish and the Jinx,
each one by the arm, and tagged the officer.

“The dirty rats,” said
Irish. “That pilot didn't have a chance. He's dead on the bottom.”

A thudding explosion
shook the river behind them and the Jinx glanced back to see that the remains
of the transport were pattering the breadth of the river.

“If we get out of
this,” said Johnny, “we'll be lucky. Keep your chin up.”

“You mean . . . they
won't set us ashore?” said the Jinx.

“Us?” said Irish
scornfully. “Newsmen? Ready to blast that story across the world? What do you
think would happen to Japanese prestige if it got noised around that they
attacked an American plane, killed the pilot, took Mr. Wu a prisoner and
executed him?”

She looked at Johnny.

“Sure, his goose is
cooked. They'll ease his body over the side as soon as they get to sea.”

“But they can't hold
us forever!” she protested.

“No?” said Johnny.
“That's like the jailbird saying they can't jail him—but there he is. Keep your
chin up. I hope you'll like Japan.”

“When I think of those
pictures,” mourned Irish, “I wanta cry. The biggest scoop of the war this
year—on the river bottom.” And he glanced at the girl and she saw in his face
that he was beginning to believe things about her too.

As they entered the
large cabin suite they heard the anchor engines grinding, and through the port
they saw the river bank begin to slide away. For a moment the Jinx was a little
dizzy.

“Is . . . is this
business always like this?” she said.

“Like what?” said
Johnny innocently.

“One minute in the
Atlantic, the next in the mountains and . . . I can't believe it . . . here we
are in China, and heading for Japan and all in less than two weeks.”

“Yeah,” said Johnny,
disinterestedly lighting a cigarette, graciously offered by the ship.

She had just started
toward her cabin when the door burst open and two marines stepped aside to let
the stick-bristled captain enter, followed by a lieutenant.

“We are very sorry,”
said the captain, politely. He made a sign and the lieutenant approached
Johnny, who at first drew back and then submitted to the inevitable. The
lieutenant made a quick search and, from under Johnny's belt, where it had lain
flat against his stomach, drew out the film container. They then searched Irish
without result.

“Thank you very much,”
said the captain. “We have that film left in your camera and now this. My field
glasses are very fine, very powerful. Thank you very much.” Bowing courteously,
he withdrew.

Johnny's lean face was
strained. He looked fixedly at the girl.

She winced and quickly
closed her door, but not soon enough to block off his “Jinx!”